News
Solid Oak Bench UK: One Bench, Five Very Different Jobs
Handmade solid oak benches for hallway, bedroom or dining, UK-made with a hard wax oil finish. Free mainland delivery. See sizes and styling tips.
Learn more
Solid Oak Wall Shelves: A No-Nonsense Styling Guide for Every Room
How to style solid oak & walnut wall shelves in the kitchen, hallway, bathroom and living room — plus real spacing and fixing tips from Kohba.
Learn more
How to Choose the Right Size Solid Oak Coffee Table (UK Sizing Guide)
Buy the wrong size coffee table and you'll spend the next decade either climbing over it or watching it float awkwardly in the middle of your living room. Neither is a good look. Luckily, sizing a solid oak coffee table for the UK's compact-but-cosy living rooms comes down to two measurements you already have: your sofa and your tape measure. Here's the maths, minus the guesswork. Start With Your Sofa, Not the Table The single most common mistake we see? People fall for a coffee table shape first and work backwards. Flip that. Measure your sofa's length, then aim for a table that's roughly two-thirds that length. A 220cm three-seater wants a table around 140-150cm. A snug 160cm two-seater is much happier with something in the 100-110cm range. Go much bigger and you'll be reaching across a small ocean of oak for your tea; go much smaller and the table disappears into the room. Our Solid Oak Coffee Table is built exactly around this logic — it runs from 100cm right up to 180cm, in 10cm steps, so you're sizing to your actual sofa rather than settling for whatever a warehouse happened to stock. Height Comes Before Width (Yes, Really) Width gets all the attention, but height is what makes a coffee table feel right when you're sitting down. The rule of thumb: your coffee table should sit within about 2-5cm of your sofa's seat height — level with or very slightly lower. Too low and you'll be leaning forward every time you reach for a coaster. Too tall and it competes with the sofa arm. Most UK sofas sit around 40-45cm at the seat, which is exactly why our tables are built to that same window — comfortable reach, no awkward reaching down. Leave Room to Actually Walk This is the bit sizing charts always skip. Between the front of your sofa and the edge of the coffee table, leave 40-45cm of clearance — enough to walk through comfortably without doing a sideways shuffle every time you cross the room. Measure this gap before you order, not after the table arrives. If your living room is on the smaller side, a narrower depth does more for you than a shorter length. Our American Solid Oak Coffee Table keeps a slim ~50cm depth with a built-in storage shelf underneath, so you get surface space without eating into your walking room. Odd-Shaped Room? Don't Fight It With One Big Table L-shaped sofa, awkward alcove, or a room that's more square than rectangular? Sometimes one large coffee table just doesn't work geometrically. In that case, swap it for a coffee table plus a smaller side table tucked by the armchair — you get the same total surface area without one oversized slab dominating the room. The Bodhi Solid Black Walnut Side Table is a neat trick for this — pull it in for extra surface space when you need it, push it back against the wall when you don't. Quick Sizing Cheat Sheet 2-seater sofa (160-180cm): coffee table 100-120cm long 3-seater sofa (200-220cm): coffee table 130-150cm long Large or L-shaped sofa: coffee table 150-180cm, or a smaller table plus a side table Table height: match your sofa seat height, give or take 5cm Walking clearance: leave 40-45cm between sofa and table edge One more thing worth knowing: because these are solid wood finished with hard wax oil rather than lacquer, a light re-oil every 12-18 months keeps the surface protected from water rings and everyday scuffs — five minutes with a cloth, no sanding required. It's the kind of table that's still earning its keep in twenty years, not landfill in five. Browse the full Coffee Tables range or check out our End Tables for the smaller pieces — every size is made to order here in the UK, so you're never stuck rounding up or down to whatever's on the shelf. Measure twice, order once, and enjoy having somewhere proper to put your cup down.
Learn more
What Is Scandinavian Redwood? Meet Kohba's New Solid Wood TV Stand (UK Made)
What is Scandinavian redwood, and why did we build our newest TV stand from it? A no-fluff guide to this solid wood, its hard wax oil finish, and how it compares to oak.
Learn more
Solid Oak Hallway Storage UK: The Autumn Entryway Edit
Get your UK hallway autumn-ready with solid oak shoe racks, benches and shelves. Handmade, hard-wax-oiled, and built to survive muddy-boot season.
Learn more
How to Style a Solid Oak Console Table in Any Room
A console table has one job: hold your keys, your lamp and your dignity when guests walk in. Most of them fail at all three. Get the size, height and styling right, though, and it quietly does more heavy lifting than almost any other piece in the house. How to Style a Solid Oak Console Table in Any Room Whether it's catching your post in the hallway or backing up your sofa in the living room, a solid oak console table only works if it fits the space and isn't just a flat surface for clutter to breed on. Here's how to get it right, room by room, using real Kohba pieces so you can see exactly what we mean. The Entryway Rule: Leave Room to Breathe In a hallway, the biggest styling mistake isn't the table — it's the traffic jam around it. Leave at least 90cm of clear walking space in front of your console, and don't push it flush to the wall if there's skirting board in the way; 5–8cm of clearance stops it rocking and keeps the back edge flat. Our Oak Console Table with Hairpin Legs is built for exactly this — solid oak top, slim metal legs that don't eat visual space, and 16 widths from 50cm to 200cm, so you're sizing to your actual hallway instead of squeezing a showroom piece into it. Behind the Sofa? Different Rules Apply A sofa console table lives by its own maths: aim for it to sit roughly 2/3 the width of your sofa, and keep the height within a few centimetres of your sofa back — too tall and it looms, too short and it disappears. Ours sits at ~80cm high, which lines up neatly with most standard UK sofas. The Elm Sofa Console Table comes in 11 widths from 100–200cm and two depths, so it's one of the few pieces of furniture you can actually measure for rather than guess at. Browse the full range in our Console Tables collection. Oak for Warmth, Walnut for Drama This is the fun part. Oak reads light, warm and Scandi — it plays well with pale walls and linen. Walnut goes darker and richer, so it earns its keep as a statement piece against neutral backdrops. Same silhouette, completely different mood. If you want the drama option, the Narrow Solid Walnut Console Table is the walnut sibling of our hairpin-leg design — same slim profile, deeper colour, and it works just as well in a hallway as it does anchoring a reading corner. The Styling Formula (Steal This) Once the table's the right size, styling it is genuinely just a formula. Use it and move on with your life: Rule of three: one tall thing (lamp or vase), one medium thing (stack of books, small bowl), one low thing (a dish for keys). Never four items in a neat row — it reads like a display cabinet, not a home. Anchor with a mirror or art above it, roughly two-thirds the table's width, so the eye has somewhere to land. Leave a third of the surface empty. A fully-dressed console just looks like storage overflow. Wipe with a barely damp cloth, then a dry one — hard wax oil finishes (like all of ours) don't need polish or spray, just avoid leaving it wet. Solid wood also moves slightly with the seasons — a hairline gap appearing in winter is the wood doing its job, not a fault, and it'll close back up once the air's more humid again. Whichever one you land on, measure your space before you fall for a photo. A console table that fits does more for a room than one that just looks nice on Instagram — and yours will be doing this job for a good few decades yet.
Learn more
How to Care for Solid Oak Furniture (Without Losing a Weekend to It)
No-nonsense care tips for solid oak and walnut furniture with a hard wax oil finish — keep your Kohba pieces looking great for years. SEO title: How to Care for Solid Oak Furniture | Kohba
Learn more
Oak or Walnut? The Honest Guide to Choosing Your Solid Wood
Oak and walnut are both brilliant choices — but they're very different. Here's how to figure out which one actually belongs in your home.
Learn more